Music in the Weeds

Usually, what happens to me while I’m weeding is that a tune sets up in my head, something random, something that I’ve heard recently: Emmy Lou Harris’ “Wrecking Ball,” a Bach partita, the song about cocaine with the interesting harmonies that my young cousin’s bluegrass band did.

Harmonies, of course, are hard for one person to sing, unless that person happens to be a certain kind of Buddhist monk. But I can hear them in my head. It’s called audiation — hearing music in your head when there isn’t any sound. A friend of mine, a composer, said that he was a lousy conductor because he heard the music, not as it was being played by the orchestra, but as it was in his mind. He was glorying in the perfection of his imagined performance while the orchestra was fumbling, uncoordinated, completely missing his intent. Too bad he couldn’t just beam what was in his head into the concert hall.

For me, the ability to audiate (if that’s the verb) is a definite advantage. It is, in fact, a gift for the world at large. No want wants to hear me sing, not even me. Even the shower, that acoustical marvel for the amateur voice, does nothing for the increasingly wobbly aging voice. Whistling is an alternative, and I can do that reasonably well, but why compete with the birds out in my weed patch when they do it so much better?

Writing about music is just as hard as reproducing it. I don’t know how the critics do it. Except they don’t, really. Like wine tasters, they talk about the mellow tones of the woodwinds and the full-bodied (or not) string section. They consider interpretation and whether the musicians got it to the reviewer’s taste. Opera reviewers have it easier. They can talk about costumes, sets, and characterization. But they can’t really make us hear the music. And if it’s a work that we haven’t heard, we haven’t a clue. "Bartók's references to Hungarian folk music give the work an undercurrent of, at one and the same time, exotica and humanity which enrich the listener’s experience, while speaking poignantly of his love for his native land… blah, blah, blah.” Well, that tells us something intellectually, but it doesn’t really let us in on what the music sounds like. And isn’t that what we really want to know? If we’re lucky enough to be able to bring up some Bartók out of our mental playlist, it may help. If not, we’re out of luck.

Here’s a test. See if you recognize this piece that I downloaded from my cerebral iPod the other day:

Brrrrrrm; Baa deee dum duh duh; Ba da brrrrrr didlyumpum dee dum. It repeats, going a bit higher: Ba da brrrrrr didlyumpum dee dum. Got it? Clearly, it’s not “Happy Birthday” or “Yankee Doodle.” It’s unmistakable in the full rendition — magisterial, mysterious, with lush orchestration (there’s the music critic language). I’ll give you a hint. It starts with a drum roll, and after a while a piano comes in.

Still haven’t got it? Don’t feel badly. It’s impossible. It’s been scientifically proven to be impossible. No one can figure out what piece of music another person is thinking of just from a crude verbal interpretation on the page or even vocalized. (It’s almost as difficult, if you know the tune, not to give some tonal inflection to those nonsense syllables. Try just saying “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you” without giving away the melody.)

So that’s why we have special musical notation. And Youtube. And the answer to the quiz: the opening of Brahms' piano concerto #1 in D minor, Opus 15. Here, it's performed by Bernard Haitink conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam with Artur Rubinstein, pianist. As the critics would say, the orchestra is rich and passionate, the soloist typically lyrical and, well, Rubinstein.

But it's better to listen.